Managing Configuration Manager with PowerShell

Team Coretech

Kent Agerlund & Kaido Järvemets #ECMDay2015

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Who we are

• Kaido Järvemets & Kent Agerlund• Profession

– Developer / Consultant– Coretech A/S, System Center Gold Partner

• Titles– Microsoft MVP: Enterprise Client Management

• Communities– Owner of http://cm12sdk.net/– Moderator on Microsoft TechNet Forums– Member of the System Center Alliance Team– Member of the System Center Influencers Team

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Boundaries• It takes 25 seconds to create 1 boundary manually.• It takes 40-50 minutes to create 200 boundaries.• How long will creating 200 boundaries take using PowerShell?

How much time have we saved with this easy task?Time saved at least 40 minutes

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - CollectionsDo you know how much time it takes to create 4 Folders, 24 Collections and 44 Collections Membership rules manually?

It takes 23-25 minutes to create these manuallyIt takes 1 minute to create these with PowerShell

Time saved 20 minutes

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life – Collections #2• Do you know when your Collections are updating?• Do you know how many Collections have Incremental updates enabled?

Time saved 1000 minutes

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Client Health• Do you have a dashboard for Client Health?• Do you have KPIs and an SLA for Client Health?• Do you measure your Client Health progress?• Do you know how many broken clients you have?

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Client Health• Coretech System Center Dashboard

Client Health Solution

Active Directory

ConfigMgr

ConfigMgr Client Script

OSD Frontend

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Client Health

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Client Health

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Deploying Site Servers and Site Roles

• How do you deploy your Site System Servers and Site Roles?• It takes 4-5 minutes to manually install Secondary Site Server roles and features and

go through Installation wizard• But what about?

– Server configuration i.e. IIS configuration etc.– SQL updates & configuration– Documentation, notifications– Additional software & tools– ConfigMgr configuration

• You definitely want every site installation & configuration to be the same

Time saved 60 minutes per Secondary Site

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Working with Applications

• Case 1– Deploying Applications/Packages using Active Directory Groups

• Case 2– Speed up testing

If you are good at Excel, take these skills to PowerShell and ConfigMgr!

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Working with Applications #2

• Case 1 - Deploying Applications/Packages using Active Directory Groups

• It takes almost 2 minutes to create:– 2 Collections – 2 Collection Rules– 2 Active Directory Groups

• But WHAT IF I need to create 50 or 100 of them?

It takes 14 seconds to create all these for 12 Applications with PowerShell

Time saved 23 minutes (12 applications)It took 10 minutes to develop

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Working with Applications #3

• Case 2 – Speed up testing– Microsoft APP-V applications– Inbox folder– Automatically moves content to a correct location, creates APP-V application, deployment type

and deployment, sends content to a distribution point

It took 48 seconds to do this all manually for 1 applicationIt took 36 seconds for 3 APP-V applications with PowerShell

Time Saved 1 minute per application

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life - Working with OSD• How often do you create your reference images?• You only need 5 steps to add your reference image to ConfigMgr with PowerShell• We have many options to extend the solution e.g. Hyper-V VM creation, etc.• What if you could automate the process 101%?

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Examples from real life – Software Updates• SMART Maintenance Windows• Software Update Management Tool• Export/Import

MANAGING CONFIGURATION MANAGER WITH POWERSHELL

Key takeaways• It´s SUPER EASY• Most daily activities in Configuration Manager require 3-5 lines of PowerShell code• If you follow these simple techniques, you will save 3146+ minutes• You can do it!• Work Smarter, not Harder• More time to learn new stuff

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